STUDIES IN ABIXMAL LIFE. 45 



into insignificance beside the paradox of tlie ama- 

 zonian entomostracon, the Apus — a race which dis- 

 penses with masculine services altogether, a race of 

 which there are no males ! ■ 



I well remember the pleasant evening on which 

 I first made the personal acquaintance of this ama- 

 zon. It was at Munich, and in the house of a cele- 

 brated naturalist, ia whose garden an agreeable as- 

 semblage of poets, professors, and their wives saun- 

 tered in the light of a setting sun, breaking up into 

 groups and iStes-d-tetes, to re-form into larger groups. 

 We had taken coffee under the branching coolness 

 of trees, and were now loitering through the brief 

 interval till supper. Our host had just returned 

 from an expedition of some fifty miles to a particu- 

 lar pond, known to be inhabited by the Apus. He 

 had made this journey because the race, although 

 prolific, is rare, and is not to be found in every spot. 

 For three successsive years had he gone to the same 

 pond in quest of the male ; but no male was to be 

 found among thousands of egg-bearing females, 

 some of which he had brought away with him, and 

 was showing us. We were amused to see them 

 swimming about, sometimes on their backs, using 

 their long oars, sometimes floating, but . always in- 

 cessantly agitating the water with their ten pairs 

 of breathing legs ; and the ladies, gathered round 

 the jar, were hugely elated at the idea of animals 

 getting rid altogether of the sterner sex — clearly a 

 useless encumbrance in the scheme of things ! 



